“Data, ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’ must therefore become the mantra of the government,” India’s chief economic advisor Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian<\/a> highlighted in the Survey, which was tabled in Parliament on Thursday.
The government aims to give access of select data sets to private sector and analytical agencies on payment basis, thus generating revenue from data which may otherwise have remained unused. This will ease pressure on government finances and generate insights and new products for both parties, thus creating a win-win situation for both.
“Going forward, the data and information highway must be viewed as equally important infrastructure as the physical highways. Such a stance can help India leapfrog to utilise the benefits of technological advances for the welfare of its people,” the Survey noted in a full chapter on data.
In its 20-page document dedicated to data generated by Indian users, the Survey touched upon the need for storing, using and disseminating it for public and private use. Subramanian said that government intervention was needed in harnessing data in social sectors such as education and healthcare where private investment remains inadequate. This will in turn benefit a larger populace for whom the primary preference would be better quality of living.
“The social sectors of the economy, such as education and healthcare, have lagged the commercial sectors in exploiting data. Because the private sector cannot internalize the social benefits of data in these sectors, the market for data in these sectors has so far not developed,” the Survey said.
It turned to the agriculture sector, for instance, where e-NAM<\/a> has been created, and added that it was unlikely that the private sector would come up with a solution like this on its own.
“To ensure that the socially optimum amount of data is harvested and used, the government needs to step in, either by providing the data itself or correcting the incentive structure faced by the private sector, depending on the nature and sensitivity of data,” it said.
The Survey underlined the requirement of creating a centralised system for putting data from different government sources together, which will hold far greater value as a collective than information in silos.
“Government already holds a rich repository of administrative, survey, institutional and transactional data about citizens, but these data are scattered across numerous government bodies. Merging these distinct data sets would generate multiple benefits with the applications being limitless,” the CEA said.
The survey also stressed upon a structural way of storing and using public data for the benefits of the public and the private sector, keeping in mind the need to ensure privacy of the public or anonymised data, which is different from the processes required for ensuring privacy of intimate data.
“The key difference in dealing with these different types of data is the knowledge and consent of the data principal. Even if not explicitly mentioned every time data is talked about in this chapter, it is assumed that the processing of data will be in compliance with accepted privacy norms and the upcoming privacy law, currently tabled in Parliament,” the CEA underlined.
While talking about the Open Government Data platform, the survey seeks to make available all data within the government for citizens, government, private and public institutions to use the data subject to user consent and appropriate privacy and fairness related constraints. “People can always opt out of divulging data to the government, where possible,” the Survey stressed.
The CEA further said that the data collected digitally would be worthless if government officials working on it lack the analytical skills to make use of it in real time. While each department should build internal capacities to analyse and exploit data, the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation and Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology can act as nodal departments to steer these efforts at the national level.
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